Education

 

A correct theory of education can follow only a correct theory of the nature of man. According to the view of human nature maintained in this book, no theory of education will be correct unless it takes into cognizance the following facts.

 

(1)      A person is forced by the internal necessity of his nature to have some ideal of life always. Every ideal has a law of its own which the person is bound to follow on account of an inner pressure. All his actions, impulses and desires are controlled, guided and directed by the ideal that he has come to choose for the time being, whether rightly or wrongly.

(2)      Every system, programme or plan of education represents some ideal on which it is based. The text-books, the mentality of the teacher, his attitude towards life generally, the views of the managing and governing authorities, whether they are public or private bodies, and the environment and the atmosphere of the school, in so far as they uphold that system, programme or plan of education reflect the ideal, which is, therefore, continually attracting the pupil towards itself. Education is a servant of ideals, whether wrong or right, and can be adapted to serve every one of them equally. All wrong ideals are due to a wrong education in a larger sense of the word. Education is an instrument which can be used with equal efficiency for better or for worse.

(3)      Of all ideals there must be only one ideal that is correct. If we do not discover that correct ideal and adapt our scheme of education to it, we shall be only moulding it, whether consciously or unconsciously, to suit one of the innumerable wrong ideals, and a wrong ideal will not induce anything but wrong actions in the learner.

(4)      The Right Ideal is the Ideal of the Self. It alone is capable of giving a permanent satisfaction to the individual and of inducing a genuine moral behaviour in him. It accords with the innermost desire of our nature and opens a vista of unlimited progress of self-consciousness. It is the ideal of the Universe itself. A wrong ideal has no value because it is unstable. We are bound to leave it behind and move forward to another ideal after some time. Moral behaviour, in accordance with absolute and universal principles of morality, is impossible without a strong love of the Right Ideal which it should be the object of education to create.

 

It is impossible to state a universal aim of education without defining the ideal of life. Some of the aims of education that have been suggested so far are as follows: to form character, to prepare for a complete living, to produce a sound mind in a sound body, to bring out the best that is in man, etc. But all these statements are vague so long as we cannot define what is “a formed character”, or “a complete living”, or “a sound mind”, or what is it that constitutes “the best” in man.

 

Sir T.P. Nunn, an eminent educationist of England, who has written one of the best known books on educational philosophy, points out the ambiguity of such statements and endeavours to raise himself above them by defining the aim of education as the free growth of individuality. But this definition is equally vague, since he does not tell us what the growth of individuality means or how the individuality can grow. We may inquire whether the individuality of an educated German, an educated Englishman and an educated Russian, fighting against each other, for example, in a war like the recent World War has grown equally or not. If it has grown equally, how is it that their ideas of morality and duty differ radically from each other? If not, what factors have interfered with its growth in one case more than in the other?

 

Sir Percy Nunn realises that we cannot define the aim of education without defining the ideal of life. The aim of education, according to him, must be the aim of life itself. One could, therefore, expect that he would suggest an ideal of life guiding the educator and pointing out the direction in which alone the individuality could grow freely. But that is not the case. He is opposed to having any ideal of life or of education at all except the ideal of freedom to have any ideal one likes. He writes:

 

“….There can be no universal aim of education, if that aim is to include the assertion of any particular ideal of life, for there are as many ideals as there are persons.”

 

The writer takes this view evidently on account of his conviction that “the assertion of any particular ideal of life” or the adaptation of the educational scheme to a particular ideal is to interfere with the freedom of individuality and, therefore, with its growth. But is it possible to keep an educational system free from the influence of all ideals? We have held that it is not possible. Some ideal is being always taught to the pupil directly or indirectly. Even in the absence of a particular ideal purposely chosen by the educator we cannot be sure that the pupil’s individuality has grown “freely”. The child has to live in surroundings which are strongly charged with the influences of particular ideals and these influences have an unfailing, deep, though gradual and imperceptible, effect on the whole outlook of the child. The child continues to be influenced by such ideals by his teacher, his home, his school atmosphere, his country and the traditions of his nation. No educator can feel relieved of his duties by leaving the child to himself in the midst of such influences, which take the form of a refined and disguised compulsion or imposition on the child. If he does so, he has hardly given him freedom. But how can he check such influences unless he has a positive ideal to lay before his pupils? Education, we know, should be a positive and not a negative process. “Do this”, and not “Do not do this”, is the proper attitude for the educator. Therefore, we have to decide what particular ideal we should place before the pupil. It can be no other than the ideal of our nature which we have called the Perfect Ideal.

 

The difficulty of finding a suitable ideal cannot be solved by refusing to have any ideal. If we need a perfectly satisfactory ideal, we must discover it. There is no need in all Nature but has the means of satisfaction. A need cannot persist for ever without being satisfied. When human nature is ultimately the same everywhere, why should there be as many ideals as there are persons? That there must be a single, perfectly satisfactory, ideal for the whole of humanity, one can presume quite reasonably and scientifically. It is true that, when that ideal is agreed upon, everyone will respond to it in his own peculiar way. The manner in which each man will strive for it will depend upon his own peculiar inclinations and capacities. Since every individual is unique, the response of each to his ideal will be unique but that does not amount to saying that each man will have his own ideal. Fundamental unity is possible side by side with a diversity of details. Each of the one hundred sonnets written by one hundred different poets will be unique and different from every other, no doubt, but it is possible for these sonnets to have the same theme, the love of England, for example. If there is a fundamental diversity of ideals, it cannot but lead to strife and chaos in the world. If individuality can grow equally along various and opposite lines, it passes one’s comprehension what the growth of individuality can mean.

 

Sir Percy Nunn seems to think that any ideal is good enough provided it is voluntarily chosen, as if mere choice will work a miracle and change a bad ideal into a good one. If he had meant that a bad choice will be ultimately abandoned in favour of a good one so that no interference is necessary, it was perfectly intelligible. But evidently he does not mean that the educator can afford to leave the pupil’s life at the mercy of trials and errors. This is clear from the attitude that he adopts towards the moral education of children. He writes:

 

“While, then, the unperverted impulses of childhood may have a biological bias towards the good it is too much to expect them to solve unaided the problems of life which have baffled some of the best intentioned minds and most highly gifted races of mankind. Beings, the deepest need of whose nature is creative expansion, must, therefore, on the whole, seek the good and cannot be satisfied unless they find it. But the tragic history of human consciousness and the story of what man has made of man show how doubtful is the search and how often it ends in disaster.”

 

If, as the writer believes, the pupil stands in need of external help in matters of moral education, we need to know in what direction that help will be given. Duty has a different meaning for different persons. Morality is a relative term and acquires its meaning from the ideal that it serves. It has a different meaning for persons of different ideals. What kind of morality should we teach the child? We cannot trust the ideal and the morality of the teacher to be always satisfactory. There may be as many ideals and as many systems of morality as there are teachers. Whatever direction the external aid for education may take, certainly, to employ that aid will amount to the “assertion” of a “particular ideal of life” which Sir Percy wants so much to avoid.

 

As the educator cannot escape the necessity of teaching a particular ideal to his pupils, he cannot escape the necessity of teaching the Right Ideal to them, if he is to assure that their individuality develops freely and safely from the influences of wrong ideals. Of course, like all ideals, the Right Ideal will have to be introduced to the child gradually, indirectly and in a manner which least interferes with his freedom and which taxes his understanding least of all.

 

Even in the case of ideals which are out of keeping with our nature the educator can arrange his educative influences in such a way that the learner feels that he has accepted voluntarily and of his own free choice what may really be imposed upon him from outside. If we consider the opposition that Hitler and Lenin had to face in the earlier stages of the revolutions created by them in Germany and Russia and the subsequent radical transformation and conviction of the views of the masses in those countries in favour of their ideologies, we understand the power of education as an instrument of conversion. The ideals really imposed by these dictators on their subject populations became gradually a part and parcel of the being of every individual in the state. By means of education the people were made to reconcile themselves to a slavery which they abhorred in the beginning. No one understood in Germany just before the Second World War and no one understands in Russia today that he and his nation have been enslaved through the magic of education. If education can convert people to wrong ideals, it can convert them much more easily to the Right Ideal which has not to be imposed from outside by the educator but the desire for which is ingrained in the nature of every person and has only to be awakened or stimulated by proper guidance and direction.

 

The Right Ideal is the only ideal which, when allowed to assert itself, will not interfere with the free growth of individuality. Rather it is the only ideal that can guarantee its free growth. This is the ideal of the innermost nature of man and its external teaching can be defended with a much greater force of the argument which Sir Percy Nunn employs to defend the external imposition of school discipline.

 

“Discipline”, writes Sir Percy Nunn, “is not an external thing but something that touches the inmost springs of conduct. It consists in the submission of one’s impulses and powers to a regulation which imposes form upon their chaos and brings efficiency and economy where there would otherwise be ineffectiveness and waste. . . . Its acceptance must on the whole be willing acceptance, the spontaneous movement of a nature in which there is an inborn impulse towards greater perfection and expressiveness.”

 

Education will hamper the free growth of individuality, if it subserves one of the ideals imposed from outside directly or indirectly, e.g. State, Nationalism, Communism, Democracy, National Socialism, etc. There is but one ideal towards which the individuality can move freely and that is the ideal of our own nature, the Right Ideal. We shall subserve outside ideals, or wrong ideals, we shall leave the child exposed to the direct or indirect influences of ideals which enslave the self, if we do not keep this ideal in view. Europe may not realise it at present but it is a fact that education in every European country, at this time, is intended to reconcile people to slavery of one kind or another.

 

Art

When we express Beauty in brick, stone, voice, sound, colour, word or movement, we call it the art of architecture, sculpture, singing, music, painting, poetry and dancing respectively.

 

Art is a part of the urge of self. Art, like other activities of the self, cannot be true to itself if it is inconsistent with the rest of the urge for Beauty. Beauty ceases to be Beauty if it is divorced from Goodness and Truth. No attribute of Beauty can be separated from it. That art, whether it is poetry, painting, dancing, music or any other variety of it, which gives an immoral suggestion, is not only immoral and degenerate, but is also low and worthless as art. Such an art is not the pure expression of self. Art gives a unique quality of pleasure, which is distinct from the pleasure derived from the satisfaction of any of the instincts. Such a pleasure can be derived only from an art which is pure and worthy of itself.

 

It does not mean that art should aim at morality. It cannot aim at anything. Like every activity of the self, it is a free expression of the self, unchained, spontaneous and for its own sake. It should aim only at the expression or the love of Beauty and the love of Beauty is not the love of a part of it but of the whole of it. If art ignores Truth and Goodness, it is no longer an expression of Beauty and is, therefore, no longer art.

 

Art is not a free expression of the urge of self and, therefore, not art at all, if it has not succeeded in making itself pure and free from all tinge of the immoral. But we also know that a thoroughly moral attitude is impossible without a strong love of the Divine Self. Of two artists of equal ability and merit we can expect an art of a higher standard from the one inspired by True Love.

 

Every activity of the self is the search for Beauty and, therefore, helps the progress or evolution of the self unless it ceases to be purely the self’s own activity and becomes an activity of one of the instincts. Art is a search for Beauty; it is, therefore, a useful help to the evolution of the self but unfortunately many a variety of art becomes easily an instrument of erotic pleasure, particularly dancing and singing. Such an art can be certainly purified and exalted but, if it may be difficult to do so, it will be in the interests of human progress to avoid it because it is no longer art but a form of sex appeal. Whenever we are observing a demonstration of such an art, we need not deceive ourselves that we are enjoying art.

 

To a man of developed self-consciousness who has become familiar with that intoxicating joy which is derived from the contemplation of Beauty or the worship and adoration of Consciousness, the pleasure which most people derive from art looks insignificant. Such a person himself acquires a much greater pleasure from art than other persons since it revives for him the great joy of the expression of self with which he is already familiar as a worshipper. If such a man is an artist, his art reaches a standard of the highest perfection. Most people resort to art as the only refuge from the worries of life because they are not familiar with the joy attending an act of genuine and sincere worship. The quality of pleasure derived from the activity of the self is the same whatever the nature of activity. The worship or adoration of Consciousness affords a much greater scope for the self’s expression than art ; therefore, the pleasure one can derive from it is immense. This point can be hardly understood by people who have had no personal experience of the great joy of worship which is the good fortune of highly self-conscious persons alone.

 

Poetry is particularly injurious to mankind if it is inconsistent with the requirements of the Right Ideal. Then it passes on ugliness for Beauty. It puts a spoke in the wheel of human progress. It pictures death as life and attracts mankind towards it. It gives poison coated over with sugar. Sometimes its harm is incalculable, as it leads great masses of men into ultimate misery by directing their urge for Beauty into wrong channels.

 

On the other hand, if poetry is consistent with Beauty, it is a great power for progress. All progress depends upon the expression of the urge of self and art helps the expression of this urge by making it active. Therefore, all art, if it is worthy of itself, is an instrument of progress. But poetry is more so, on account of the fact that it can easily reach all, be enjoyed at little expense and as often as one desires and also because it is more expressive and has the capacity to come intimately into contact with our daily life.

 

All expression and contemplation of Beauty is the activity of the self. Art is, therefore, an activity which is of the same category as worship or moral action and the pleasure derived from art is of the same character as that derived from prayers. Since art is a free expression of self, a slave or a man having a wrong ideal cannot be expected to produce art of the highest quality. It will be often no more than an imitation of Nature or an expression of the tastes of the public whom it aspires to please. A slave is unable to create and invent with the whole of his natural capacity. As his self is not free, his capacities for creation and invention suffer from limitations and his art suffers from a lack of originality. Art is an expression of Beauty and the source of all knowledge of Beauty is the self. If the artist is unable to express himself fully in his art, his art is not a free expression of Beauty and is, therefore, not art of the highest standard. The artist will be able to express himself fully and freely, if he is free from the love of all ideals that are foreign to the nature of the self. Wrong ideals enslave the self and injure its capacity for the realisation and expression of Beauty. The highest standard of art is possible only when the self of the artist is perfectly free.